We Built This City

Mildred Pierce, a new HBO miniseries based on the 1941 novel by James M. Cain, chronicles the professional trials and parental tribulations of a single mother in 1930s Hollywood. To re-create the city’s Spanish-style homes and bustling streets, director Todd Haynes tapped production designer Mark Friedberg, who wowed aesthetes with his historical savvy and painterly attention to color in their previous collaboration, Far from Heaven. The results are transporting (as is Kate Winslet, above, in the title role).